Asking with Intent

On the functions of written parliamentary questions

Solveig Bjørkholt

University of Oslo

Martin Søyland

University of Oslo

2024-10-31

Backdrop

The Drama is in the Ink
Conflict in Written Parliamentary Questions

[O]pposition MPs ask more positive questions than MPs from governing parties. However, when including the topical content of questions, the effect is consistently reduced. We argue these findings point to the existence of a participation threshold for governing parties.

Bjørkholt and Søyland (2024)




Recurring (reviewer) problem:
Why do MPs ask these questions in the first place?

_______________________________


Two questions

  1. What are the potential motivations/functions?
  2. Can we measure it?

WPQs in Stortinget

  • Short questions
    • Optional justification (1 A4)
    • Each MP quota: 2 per week
    • Presidency can dismiss questions
  • Minister should answer within 6 days:
    • An actual answer
    • Justification for not answering
    • Message that the WPQ will not be answered

Nonlegislative activities


%%{
  init: {
    'theme': 'base',
    'themeVariables': {
        'primaryColor': 'white',
        'primaryBorderColor': 'black',
        'secondaryColor': 'white'
    }
  }
}%%

flowchart TD
   PD["Used by procedural<br>necessity in legislation"]
   UT2["Used in the<br>legislative process?"]
   
   LA["`**Legislative activity**`"]
   NL["`**Nonlegislative activity**`"]

   PD -- Yes --> LA
   PD -- No --> UT2 -. When yes .-> LA
   UT2 -. When no .-> NL
   UT2 -- Never --> NL

Intent for nonlegislative participation

Functions of WPQs

  Type Label
Oversight Reactive (Ogul and Rockman 1990) Accountability
Active (Ogul and Rockman 1990) Information gathering

Functions of WPQs

  Type Label
Oversight Reactive (Ogul and Rockman 1990) Accountability
Active (Ogul and Rockman 1990) Information gathering
Issue competition Self-promotion (Rasch 2011) Personal representation
Party-promotion (Green-Pedersen 2010) Partisan campaigning

Functions of WPQs

  Type Label
Oversight Reactive (Ogul and Rockman 1990) Accountability
Active (Ogul and Rockman 1990) Information gathering
Issue competition Self-promotion (Rasch 2011) Personal representation
Party-promotion (Green-Pedersen 2010) Partisan campaigning
Obstructionsim Legislative obstructionism (Wawro and Schickler 2010) Obstruction

Examples

Accountability

Margret Hagerup
Conservatives
20.04.2023

Why has the government not followed up on the consultation input from LO and NHO […] where they request that training offices must still be allowed to be parties to training contracts and that businesses should still be able to organize in such a way that the financing goes through the training offices?

Information gathering

Grete Wold
Socialist Left Party
23.05.2023

Can the minister provide an update on the follow-up and status of the decision to test alternatives to the current examination system, and have any municipalities received approval for their applications?

Personal representation

Geir Pollestad
Center Party
30.10.2020

The municipality of Time has organized its cinema operations as part of the municipal enterprise. This means they cannot participate in the compensation scheme. If the municipality had organized the cinema operations as a limited company (AS) or with its own organization number, a significant portion of the COVID-19 losses would have been covered. Does the minister believe it is right for the municipality to incur a loss due to its organizational structure, or will the minister take steps to address this issue?

Partisan campaigning

André N. Skjelstad
Liberal Party
31.01.2017

What is the situation regarding access to literature and translations into South Sami? […] The Liberal Party believes it is important to invest in translators and the development of literature and therefore wants more information about the situation of the South Sami language in 2017.

Obstruction

Gjermund Hagesæter
Progress Party
22.03.2012

Can casting gand [spells], or “ganding” [spellcrafting] be punishable under Norwegian law?

Methods

Data


id mp_id q_from_party q_to_party ministry text
84001 FHB A H FIN kva er det faglege belegget for at forsinkelsesrente på utsetting av skatteinnbetalingar mv er nødvendig med omsyn til økonomisk risiko
27185 UEK FrP KrF HD hva vil statsråden gjøre for å endre praksisen med invitasjon til mammografiundersøkelser til også å gjelde for kvinner over 69
45483 ELN H A JD statsråden har ved flere anledninger påpekt at det er behov for et barnehus i ålesund og at det er ålesund
54284 BÅH FrP Sp SD nok en sommer opplever vi store problemer i flytrafikken på grunn av mangel på flygeledere og det stilles mange spørsmål
32810 ADA H A JD på hvilken måte vil justisministeren sikre at politiet har hensiktsmessige og effektive ikt løsninger kriminalitetsutviklingen og den teknologiske utviklingen i

Data

  • \(36,532\) WPQs
  • \(6\) Parliamentary periods
  • \(14\) Parties
  • \(6,845,888\) Tokens
  • \(736\) MPs

Manual coding

  • Coding scheme (see paper) mostly based on Wiberg (1994)
  • Meeting with RAs discussing
    • theoretical backdrop
    • coding scheme
    • examples
    • multi-membership
  • Code only one main category
    • … and sub-categories separate
Function coder1 coder2 coder3 Sum
Accountability 28 90 59 177
Obstruction 4 0 3 7
Information gathering 76 75 95 246
Partisan campaigning 12 7 4 23
Personal representation 38 27 26 91
Sum 158 199 187 544

Inter-coder reliability


📉

NorBERT 3

Training data
  • Part of Samuel et al. (2023) NorBench
  • Subset of WPQs at least 2 coders agree on
  • Build fine-tuned NorBert3-base models
    • One for each category (excluding obstruction)
    • Only using WPQs at least two coders agreen on (main/sub)
  • Classify remaining WPQs

Testing the classifications

  • WPQ class proportion(s) as DV
    • H1: MPs use the accountability function in WPQs more often on issues where coalition partners diverge (Whitaker and Martin 2022)
    • H2: MPs use the information gathering function in WPQs more often on issues where they are not experts (Bendor, Taylor, and Gaalen 1987)
    • H3: MPs use the partisan campaigning function in WPQs more often when asking a question to their own party
    • H4: MPs use the personal representation function in WPQs more often when an election is close
Variable N Mean Std. Dev. Min Pctl. 25 Pctl. 75 Max
Accountability 36496 0.57 0.39 0.00028 0.13 0.96 1
Information gathering 36496 0.39 0.43 0.000032 0.0039 0.94 1
Party representation 36496 0.5 0.084 0.19 0.45 0.56 0.74
Personal representation 36496 0.25 0.38 0.00014 0.0027 0.45 1
Opposition 36532 0.95 0.22 0 1 1 1
Same party 36532 0.022 0.15 0 0 0 1
Coalition partner 36532 0.028 0.17 0 0 0 1
Questioner gender (male) 36532 0.61 0.49 0 0 1 1
Minister gender (male) 36339 0.57 0.49 0 0 1 1
Age 36512 47 11 21 38 55 78

Temporary results

What functions are used more?

What drives intent?

What drives intent?

What drives intent?

What drives intent?

To-do

  1. Consider coding more questions
    • target the partisan and obstruction categories through search?
  2. Gather data for testing H1, H2, and H3
  3. Consolidate the theoretical framework
  4. Fine-tune the fine-tuned model
  5. Use NorBERT3-large on cluster

References

Bendor, Jonathan, Serge Taylor, and Roland Van Gaalen. 1987. “Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Asymmetric Information.” American Journal of Political Science 31 (4): 796–828. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2111225.
Bjørkholt, Solveig, and Martin Søyland. 2024. “The drama is in the ink: Conflict in written parliamentary questions.” Legislative Studies Quarterly n/a (n/a). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12474.
Green-Pedersen, Christoffer. 2010. “Bringing Parties Into Parliament: The Development of Parliamentary Activities in Western Europe.” Party Politics 16 (3): 947–369.
Ogul, Morris S., and Bert A. Rockman. 1990. “Overseeing Oversight: New Departures and Old Problems.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 15 (1): 5. https://doi.org/10.2307/439999.
Rasch, Bjørn Erik. 2011. “Behavioural Consequences of Restrictions on Plenary Access: Parliamentary Questions in the Norwegian Storting.” The Journal of Legislative Studies 17 (3): 382–93.
Samuel, David, Andrey Kutuzov, Samia Touileb, Erik Velldal, Lilja Øvrelid, Egil Rønningstad, Elina Sigdel, and Anna Palatkina. 2023. “NorBench – A Benchmark for Norwegian Language Models.” In Proceedings of the 24th Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics (NoDaLiDa), 618–33. Tórshavn, Faroe Islands: University of Tartu Library. https://aclanthology.org/2023.nodalida-1.61.
Wawro, Gregory J., and Eric Schickler. 2010. “Legislative Obstructionism.” Annual Review of Political Science 13 (1): 297–319. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.040108.105759.
Whitaker, Richard, and Shane Martin. 2022. “Divide to Conquer? Strategic Parliamentary Opposition and Coalition Government.” Party Politics 28 (6): 999–1011.
Wiberg, Matti. 1994. Parliamentary Control in the Nordic Countries: Forms of Questioning and Behavioural Trends. 16. Finnish Political Science Association.